Pluckley Church of England Primary School‘Enjoying, Learning and Achieving Together.’

Spidermonkeys

Spider Monkey class is full of wonderful foundation stage children!
We have got lots to learn, as well as getting to know lots of new friends!

Check our Weekly News articles below for up to date weekly news all about our class and what we have been learning.Well, what a fantastic day we have had today. What an adventure. We travelled by coach to Hastings sea front where we looked at the very big lifeboat. Next we walked to the beach and made the biggest mound of stones. We had to search for the biggest and the most interesting stone. We had a wonderful lunch, sitting in the sunshine. We then headed off to the Aquarium where we saw lots of wonderful things that we have been learning about.in our topic. Well done to all of the Spider Monkeys for being so well behaved.Our new topic is Oceans!
We have got so much learning to do all based around the ocean. We will be taking inspiration from a variety of books and films. We will be completing a mini topic around shells inspired by the book 'Sharing a shell' by Julia Donaldson. We will be exploring the characters in the Disney film 'The Little Mermaid' as well as writing our own watery themed stories.
Our classroom has been transformed into an ocean themed room and we have been really enjoying playing in the Sea side shop role play corner.
During Numeracy we will be focusing on our addition and subtraction skills as well as some data handling based on our favourite 'Finding Nemo' characters.
During our creative sessions we will be thinking about moving as some of our favourite sea creatures, creating some underwater music and also listening to the sounds of some underwater animals. In our artwork we will be collaging jellyfish and really focusing on our sketching skills when observing shells.
There are so may exciting things to look forward to! Keep checking our Weekly news articles for updates on how we are getting on.

9/6/14- This week we are getting ready to go on our first school trip to Hastings Aquarium. Last week we learnt all about what lives in aquariums and we all know some interesting facts about the creatures that live in Hastings aquarium. Did you know a dolphin sleeps with one eye open! Today we have made an itinerary for our trip and put images in order alongside sentences. We looked on a map to see if we could spot Smarden and Hastings and looked at the different routes we could take to get there. After our trip we have lots of exciting things planned for our learning.

2/6/14- This week we are learning all about aquariums so we are ready for our school trip to Hastings aquarium. Today we have been learning about what lives in an aquarium. We discussed our own experiences of aquariums. Some of us had been to Brighton, Hastings, and London aquariums before so shared their experiences with the others. In numeracy we have revisited subtraction but concentrating on our number bonds to 10. If 6+4=10 that means 10-4=6. We have also been looking at how to stay safe at the seaside and have created a class list of dangers to look out for!

As we progress through our topic we are now focusing on Antarctica!
We have been using lots of different texts to support our learning including fiction and non-fiction. The children have really enjoyed learning facts about the animals in Antarctica particularly penguins! We became real reporters and presented Antarctica news to the class!
We will be using the texts such as 'Penguin Small' 'Mr Poppers Penguins' and 'I love you sleepy head' to inspire our reading and writing. We have also referred to the film 'Happy Feet' when learning about letter and postcard writing.

During our Knowledge and Understanding sessions we will be investigating ice! We have already freed a trapped Lego man from an ice ball by helping it to melt. We will be looking in more detail at freezing and melting and will even make some ice lollies!

During Numeracy we have been consolidating what we already know about addition and subtraction. We are now moving on to look at halving and doubling numbers.

Our whole school topic is DESERTS. We have got so many exciting things to look forward to this term.

Knowledge and Understanding - We will be learning all about the desert environment, which animals live there and how they survive. We shall be asking and answering lots of questions as we compare deserts to our own environment. When we have become experts we will film our own factual reports.

Literacy - We will be learning to write letters and postcards inspired by the book 'Meerkat Mail'. We will also be using the film Aladdin as inspiration for story writing and character descriptions.

Numeracy - This term we shall be focusing on our addition and subtraction skills, building to number bonds to 10.We will be applying our skills in weekly problem solving sessions.

Expressive Arts and Design - We will begin by using deserts as our inspiration to create sand art pictures. We will also be experimenting moving to music as various desert animals.

For a look into our learning across Terms 3 and 4 please take a look at the Topic Web posted below.

We will also upload photographs of us learning and growing throughout the year.
Miss Kelly